Christian? Part 2

When I was a young Christian, I thought that being a disciple of Jesus was like being a SEAL Team member in the church. You know, a super Christian. The ordinary Christian was not godly like the disciples were. However, in the last article, I showed how I had discovered that a Christian is a subset of disciple of Jesus, not the other way around. In other words, if you aren’t a disciple of Jesus, you aren’t a Christian at all. “The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch,” the text says (Acts 11:26). Then, I left the last post saying that I would explain how one becomes a disciple. So, here we go.

It appears that folks heard about Jesus and all the cool things he was doing (healing people, feeding large numbers of people, raising folks from the dead, etc.) and left their homes to go after him. I’m sure some of them had needs they wanted to be met, and others simply wanted to watch all the hoopla. But there were a few who heard what he was saying while doing all the miracles and they wanted to be like him and to join his band of wild boys.

What he was saying was summarized in what we call the sermon on the mount. We find it in Matthew 5-7 and in Luke 6:20-26. It starts out describing what happens when we are blessed and ends with a challenge or pronouncement, “He who hears these words of mine and does them…” (Mt 7:24-27).

As I read my Bible there seems to be two threads woven together that make our discussion really interesting. First, we have passages like these,

If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple (Lk 14:26).

So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.” (Lk 14:33) 

Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” (Lk 9:23–24) 

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Mt 7:7–8).

So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. (Lk 18:22)

Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me (Mt 19:21).

Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14–15). 

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). 

From these passages, it appears that when we hear about Jesus, we need to drop everything and follow him with every fiber of our being. We need to sell all our stuff, leave our jobs, our families, our friends, and make Jesus the center of our lives. It’s totally a choice that we make to believe who he is, what he said, and to give our lives to him lock stock and barrel. We see him or hear about him and we choose to believe the story and choose to become his disciple.

Then we have these,

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day (Jn 6:44). 

All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (Jn 6:37). 

And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father” (Jn 6:65).

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Eph 2:8–9). 

who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began (2 Tim 1:9). 

These passages make it look like Jesus or the Father calls and draws someone to follow Jesus. And you can’t come to him unless you have a divine call on your life. We’re just walking along, and God whacks us in the side of the head with salvation and viola, we’re Christians, disciples.

And being the logicians that we are, we immediately think, what’s with this? Is it that we choose to follow Jesus and thus become a disciple of Christ? Or is that he calls us like he did the apostles (Mk 3:14–19) and we have nothing to do with the decision at all? Either/or.

There’s another way and that is that it is a both/and kind of thing. One item of information that I haven’t mentioned directly but if you’ve been reading carefully, you will have noticed is that little word faith in some of the passages mentioned. In Romans 10 we have this helpful little tidbit,

that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom 10:9–13). 

This passage says that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved. It also says that if you believe, you will be righteous, and if you confess (that is, to say what God says about a topic) with your mouth, you will have salvation (which is what saved means). Further, it says that if you call on the name of the Lord, you will be saved. Being saved is one of the characteristics of being a disciple of Jesus. In other words, Jesus’ disciples are those who have been and are being saved (more on this another time).

In this paragraph we have choices being made and believing going on. In a couple of the passages quoted above, we saw that God gives faith (another word for believing). So, we have both things happening at the same time. God calls us, gives us faith, causes us to believe, and we choose to believe and to act on the facts of the matter. Both/and.

So, a person becomes a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, both by choosing to follow Jesus (including all those standards that Jesus required) and because God is working in his/her heart to give faith and to call them to choose and to follow. So then, both are happening at the same time. We choose and God chooses. 

Photo by Damian Siodłak on Unsplash